The Best Way to Explain COVID-19 to a Kid
Our second-grade teacher said it was a ‘fast flu’ that ‘scatters fast’
The teacher told my seven-year-old about the novel coronavirus, and I’m glad she did.
Ever since the first fears came down about COVID-19 back in January, I’ve wondered aloud how to tell my children how to deal with what I knew back then would become an epidemic. So I said nothing but focused instead on stocking up on foods and medicine and reminding my children how to properly wash their hands. Three weeks ago seems like a very long time now. And of course, I was wrong about the virus as it became a pandemic. And now, as schools close around the nation but my own Chicago Public Schools remain open, it was time to let my oldest know what we’re up against.
He already knows his little brother has a respiratory immune issue, so I told my firstborn son the new protocol for getting home from school. We already remove our shoes at the door and scrub our hands, but now he is to remove pants and jacket and drop them, head straight to the downstairs bathroom, and scrub his hands and fingers and top and bottom of wrists for 30 whole seconds. Yes, he can count backward. I remove his shirt and put on a new shirt and new pants. Then? He can work on his Boy Scout knots, his dinosaur homework, or play with his Beyblades.
